<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Google Sitemap Generator: Introduction</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://code.google.com/css/dev_docs.css" />
</head>
<body id="gsg_intro">
<a name="top" id="top"></a>
<!-- ########## PAGE HEADER ########## -->
<div id="header">
  <div id="logo"><a href="http://code.google.com/"><img src="http://code.google.com/images/code_sm.png" border="0" alt="Return to Google Code homepage" /></a></div>
  <h1 id="doc_title">Google Sitemap Generator </h1>
</div>
<div id="wrapper">
  <!-- ########## SIDE NAVIGATION ########## -->
  <div id="sidenav">
    <ul>
      <li id="gsg_intro_link"><a href="gsg-intro.html">Introduction</a></li>
      <li id="gsg_install_link"><a href="gsg-installation.html">Installation</a></li>
      <li id="gsg_conf_link"><a href="gsg-configuration.html">Configuration</a></li>
      <li id="gsg_ref_link"><a href="gsg-reference.html">Reference</a></li>
    </ul>
  </div>
</div>
<!-- ########## END SIDE NAVIGATION ########## -->
<!-- ########## PAGE CONTENT ########## -->
<div id="pagecontent">
  <h1 id="page_title">Introduction</h1>
  <p>Google Sitemap Generator (Beta) is software that improves the ability of search engines to find the content of your websites. Once you install and configure Google Sitemap Generator on your web server, it analyzes  the way that users access   content, then builds Sitemap files that contain the URLs that you want search engines to find. </p>
  <p>Google Sitemap Generator creates industry-standard  Web Sitemaps and automatically submits them to the  search engines of your choice. It can also create Sitemaps for Google's Mobile and Code Search services. In the case of Blog Search, Google Sitemap Generator provides analogous services, but rather than creating  Sitemap files, Google Sitemaps Generator collects the URLs and periodically pings them to Google. </p>
  <p>This document is an overview of Google Sitemap Generator. For more information about the 
    Sitemap protocol, see <a href="http://www.sitemaps.org/">http://www.sitemaps.org/</a>. For information about Google-specific 
    functions and Webmaster Tools, see <a href="http://google.com/support/webmasters/">http://google.com/support/webmasters/</a>.</p>
  <p>In this document: </p>
  <ol class="toc">
    <li><a href="#gsg_intro_about">About Google Sitemap Generator</a></li>
    <li><a href="#gsg_intro_aboutdoc">About This Document</a></li>
    <li> <a href="#gsg_intro_issues">Installation and Deployment </a></li>
    <li><a href="#gsg_intro_configoptions">Configuration Options </a></li>
    <li>
      <ol>
        <li><a href="#gsg_req">System requirements</a></li>
        <li><a href="#gsg_intro_loadbalanced">Load-balanced web servers</a></li>
        <li><a href="#gsg_multiplesites">Multiple sites on a single server</a></li>
      </ol>
    </li>
    <li><a href="#gsg_intro_submission">Sitemap Submission </a></li>
    <li><a href="#gsg_intro_sec">Security and Privacy Safeguards</a></li>
    <li><a href="#gsg_intro_comm">Community</a></li>
  </ol>
  <h2>About Google Sitemap Generator<a name="gsg_intro_about" id="gsg_intro_about"></a></h2>
  <p>Google Sitemap Generator takes a fresh approach to Sitemap generation. The previous generation of Sitemap generators created Sitemaps by crawling  websites, so they did not necessarily improve on the coverage provided by search engine crawlers. In contrast, Google Sitemap Generator monitors your web server traffic 
    and detects updates to your site whenever a user accesses a new page. The main features of Google 
    Sitemap Generator are:</p>
  <ul>
    <li>Creation of Sitemaps based on web server traffic, web server logs and web server files. </li>
    <li> Efficient generation of Web Sitemaps used by many search engines, and of Google-specific feeds for Mobile, Code Search,  and Blog Search. </li>
    <li>Easy configuration. Once you’ve completed the initial configuration, no further administration 
      is needed. But if you do want to tweak the settings, you can use a web-based administration console. </li>
    <li>Easy filtering of URLs, based on URL patterns.</li>
    <li>Automatic calculation of certain metadata, such as modified time and change frequency.</li>
    <li> Automatic submission of Sitemaps for Web search. </li>
  </ul>
  <p>Google previously released <a href="http://code.google.com/p/sitemap-generators/">sitemapgen</a>, a Python-based tool, to Sourceforge. In comparison to sitemapgen, Google 
    Sitemap Generator is a next-generation tool that relies on web server filtering rather than 
    crawling, provides enhanced features, and supports more formats. </p>
  <p class="backtotop"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p>
  <h2>About This Document<a name="gsg_intro_aboutdoc" id="gsg_intro_aboutdoc"></a></h2>
  <p>This document was written for web server administrators. The document assumes that you know about the contents of your site and about your web server environment, but it does not require advanced technical knowledge. </p>
  <p>This document uses the following typographic conventions: </p>
  <ul>
    <li><code>Monospace font</code> indicates a command, or another type of literal value that you enter as-is.</li>
    <li><em>Italic</em> font indicates the name of a variable for which you or the system substitutes an actual value, or a generic name that the UI shows in a more specific way. </li>
    <li>Square brackets ([ ]) in a command format indicate optional parameters. </li>
    <li>Ellipses (...) in a command format indicate that you can repeat the previous item. </li>
  </ul>
  <p>At the time of this Beta release, we know that this document lacks some real-world information, and we hope to gain that  while the product is in Beta. We hope that the community provides comments, feedback, and content, to increase documentation coverage  over time. </p>
  <h2>Installation and Deployment <a name="gsg_intro_issues" id="gsg_intro_issues"></a></h2>
  <p>Check our system requirements and determine how best to deploy Google Sitemap Generator 
    in your environment. For full installation information, refer to the <a href="gsg-installation.html">Installation</a> document. </p>
  <h3><a name="gsg_req" id="gsg_req"></a> <br />System requirements
  </h3>
  <p>Google Sitemap Generator runs on a variety of operating systems and web servers. See the <a href="gsg-installation.html">Installation</a> document for the Windows and Linux prerequisites. </p>
  <p>Based on our performance tests, Google Sitemap Generator has minimal performance 
    impact on a web server. </p>
  <h3><a name="gsg_intro_loadbalanced" id="gsg_intro_loadbalanced"></a><br />
    Load-balanced web servers  </h3>
  <p>For a site that is served by multiple, load-balanced web servers, you can choose from the 
    following deployment options: </p>
  <ul>
    <li> Install Google Sitemap Generator on one web server, set up a new domain name for 
      this web server, and submit your Sitemaps to Google by using cross-domain 
      submission.  This is the recommended solution, although cross-domain submissions might not work for other search engines.</li>
    <li> Install Google Sitemap Generator on one web server and make sure that the generated Sitemaps are copied to the other web servers. </li>
    <li>Install Google Sitemap Generator on all web servers, and use the same settings to configure them. All the web servers will then generate Sitemaps. </li>
  </ul>
  <h3><a name="gsg_multiplesites" id="gsg_multiplesites"></a><br />
    Multiple sites on a single web server</h3>
  <p> Once you install Google Sitemap Generator on the web server, it can serve all sites on the server. </p>
  <p>In the  administration console, you can  
    enable or disable the use of Google Sitemap Generator for each site, and you can configure each site separately. </p>
  <p class="backtotop"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p>
  <h2> Configuration Options<a name="gsg_intro_configoptions" id="gsg_intro_configoptions"></a></h2>
  <p> Google Sitemap Generator includes the following configuration options: </p>
  <ul>
    <li>Enabling and disabling the generation and submission of Sitemaps for Web, Mobile, and Code Search, and configuring the ping of blog content. </li>
    <li>Enabling and disabling different URL collection mechanisms, including a web server  filter, a file scanner, and a log parser. </li>
    <li>Setting limits on the system resources used. </li>
    <li>Specifying the schedule for Sitemap generation. </li>
    <li>Specifying the patterns for URLs you want to include and exclude. </li>
  </ul>
  <p>For more information about configuration, see the <a href="gsg-configuration.html">configuration</a> document. </p>
  <p class="backtotop"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p>
  <h2>Sitemap Submission<a name="gsg_intro_submission" id="gsg_intro_submission"></a> </h2>
  <p >How are search engines informed about the Sitemaps that  Google Sitemap Generator creates? </p>
  <p>To submit Web Sitemaps, you have the following options: </p>
  <ul>
    <li>Configure Google Sitemap Generator to put the Web Sitemap URL into the robots.txt file, so that the search engine crawler finds the Sitemap file. </li>
    <li>Configure Google Sitemap Generator to perform anonymous ping of specified search engines. </li>
    <li>Submit the Sitemaps  through Google Webmaster Central. </li>
  </ul>
  <p>To submit the Google-specific Mobile and Code Search Sitemaps, you use Google Webmaster Central. </p>
  <p>To submit Blog Search content, you specify the frequency with which Google Sitemap Generator pings the Google Blog Service.  Google Sitemap Generator does not create Sitemap files for Blog Search. Instead, it collects the URLs in its internal database and then sends them to Google. </p>
  <p class="note"><strong>Note:</strong> This document generally does not distinguish between Blog Search and other types of content, although there are no physical Sitemap files associated with Blog Search, as there are for other types of content. </p>
  <h2>Security and Privacy Safeguards <a name="gsg_intro_sec" id="gsg_intro_sec"></a></h2>
  <p> Google Sitemap Generator is being released through the open source community, so that you can download and examine it. We already already know that you don’t want Google Sitemap Generator to send any private data to Google, and the only information that you'll be sharing with Google is the Sitemap file! </p>
  <p>A Sitemap file optionally contains  a change frequency and priority for each URL. Google Sitemap Generator sets the priority based  on page views, but the resulting Sitemap file does not contain any information about page view statistics or other information you wouldn't want to expose. There's no difference  between a  generated Sitemap file and a manually created Sitemap file. </p>
  <p>To prevent user data from being exposed, Google Sitemap Generator removes all URL query fields  before adding the URL to a Sitemap. URL query fields are the name/value parameters that follow the question mark in a URL, and they often contain user information, such as name, password, or other private details. If you want to include specified query fields, you can list them in the administration console. </p>
  <p>You are responsible for ensuring that  Web Sitemap files do not contain user data when you submit them  to Google. To accomplish this, you can perform test generations of Web Sitemap files and examine them for any URLs that should not be included. For more information, refer to the <a href="gsg-configuration.html#gsg_con_testing">testing section</a> of the <a href="gsg-configuration.html">configuration document</a>. </p>
  <h2>Community<a name="gsg_intro_comm" id="gsg_intro_comm"></a></h2>
  <p> If you have questions or want to know what others are asking, check out our <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/google-sitemap-generator ">discussion 
    group</a>. </p>
  <p class="backtotop"><a href="#top">Back to top</a></p>
</div>
<p id="date"> Updated on
  <!-- javascript to display the date this page was updated -->
  <script type="text/javascript">
<!-- hide script from old browsers
    var lm = new Date(document.lastModified);
    document.write(lm.toDateString());
//-->
</script>
  <!-- end javascript -->
</p>
</body>
</html>
